Have Your Country Back

Ben Wildsmith

You see, when I was a lad, politicians didn’t apprise themselves of the goings-on at music festivals. You didn’t catch Willie Whitelaw punching the walls of Downing Street in fury at the onstage utterings of Gaye Bykers on Acid. He had enough on his plate.

As usual, you can thank Anthony Lynton Blair for the current circumstances. Ever since he had himself photographed carrying a Fender Stratocaster into Number 10, politicians have allowed themselves to imagine they can plausibly combine the School-Prefectly, philistine, and grasping hunky-doriness of their day jobs with pretensions to cultural savoir-faire.

We’re supposed to believe that Lord Tom Watson enjoys something other than Bunterish scheming because he’s been to Glastonbury. They are trendy vicars with nothing but their venal ambition for guiding scripture.

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Rozzers

So, of course Labour is setting the rozzers on pop singers. Sizzling with envy for entertainers, the friendless duffers around the Cabinet table were bound to seize the chance to pull on the jack boots in pursuit of Reform UK voters. Pop singers, protestors, the disabled…it’s not a great time to be outside the narrow vision of life that inhabits our leaders. If Yvette Cooper were to turn up in epaulettes and a peaked cap, you’d think twice before sniggering.

All of which must have Nigel Farage in stitches. With every authoritarian statement, from demanding silence from artists, to misrepresenting protest as terrorism, Labour is erecting a fortress from which its successor can operate. At the very time that it should be future proofing our rights against encroaching fascism, our government is weakening them in the doomed hope it will appease the mob.

The laughable inauthenticity of their ham-fisted appeals to patriotism suckers nobody. Keir Starmer’s Morrissey-in-a-suit act with all those union flags is so contrived as to be slightly camp. Unless Labour has uncovered a rich seam of postmodernist Reform UK voters then it’s unlikely to be effective.

A seductive component of Reform UK’s appeal is that it gives permission to break taboos.

‘I’m not saying that,’ Farage often protests, ‘but a lot of people up and down the country are beginning to think that way.’

When I was a kid, my grandad used to enjoy telling me to drop litter in front of my mum. She’d go nuts and we’d be helpless laughing. The thrill of that was in being given permission, and that’s what Farage offers. He’s not telling you what to think, mind, but he’s got a pretty good idea, eh, a nod’s as good as a wink…

This is, of course, the stock manoeuvre of a con man. You are given permission to dream up your own downfall.

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Corporate interests

What Farage has in store became a little clearer this week. In announcing plans to put business leaders into his cabinet, he allowed a glimpse at the true nature of his project. The fusing of the state with corporate interests was a feature of Mussolini’s regime and offers opportunities for mutual enrichment for all involved.

The bones of the UK state, in other words, are finally to be picked clean.

Interestingly, the more, shall we say ideological, Reform UK followers seem to be abandoning ship. Those with particularly angry and swollen legitimate concerns about immigration are looking to hardline characters like Rupert (how) Lowe (can you go) MP and Ben Habib.

Perhaps Farage’s hucksterish appeal is less convincing when experienced close-up. The rancorous disintegration of the whole shebang is a possible outcome.

Politically disastrous

In the meantime, though, giving any ground whatsoever to the populist right is morally reprehensible and politically disastrous. If Labour continues to legitimise the demands of its opponents, then it will cede power to them as a matter of nature.

Any fool should be able to see that. If you hand over Bob Vylan, they will be back for Gary Lineker…

If the UK does fall for Farage, and is collectively taken for every penny, then there will be a poetry to it. All of the filth and shame that has been covered up with union flags over the centuries will be revealed at last. There you are, have your country back.